Electronic devices, including flash memory, generate heat during operation. When such devices are running within an enclosure, the generated heat can produce significant temperature increases that, if left unchecked, can lead to reduced system performance or worse, damage to or failure of devices within the enclosure.
A data storage system, for example, may package many disk drives, such as hard disk drives (HD), solid state drives (SSD) or board solid state drives (BSSD), arranged in slots within an enclosure. These products are often configured with different storage capacities based on customers' demand. A fully loaded storage product has all slots filled with the disk drives. A half loaded storage device has half of the total number of slots filled with the disk drives. Enclosures may be sold with as few as ⅛, 1/16 or even less of the slots filled by operational disk drives. Other configurable electronics systems are similarly sold with different electronic component configurations in a common enclosure
Many techniques exist to remove heat from single components, such as heat sinks, cooling fans, etc. However, these techniques fall short when addressing more complex systems within enclosures. Additionally, in systems that are configurable to include different numbers of internal components, the presence or absence of components within the enclosure not only affects the amount of heat produced within the enclosure, but can also change the effectiveness of the heat reduction measures implemented for cooling the system. For example, a solid state drive enclosure that is a fully loaded has different airflow characteristics than one that is only partially loaded. The air flow in the partially loaded system may in fact bypass certain heat generating drives by instead following voids in the enclosure left by the absence of drives.
One partial solution is to install blank or dummy drives in the empty slots so that the overall airflow characteristics are the same within an electronics system regardless of the number or configuration of the operational components or drives. However, blank drives are expensive. When dozens of them are installed in a given electronics system it drives up the cost. The blank or dummy drives increase the system airflow impedance that reduces the efficiency of cooling significantly.
In light of this, it would be desirable to provide a system and method for more effectively cooling electronic components found in configurable electronics systems with multiple components, particularly those where the number of components within the system is variable and the cooling techniques change in effectiveness based on the presence or absence of components within the enclosure.